Trains stop calling at Lewes from 5pm and five main routes close at 4.45pm. Fire site tickets are £10 and on sale now. The council asks visitors to stay away.

Lewes Bonfire is on Thursday 5 November 2026. It is a weekday, and the travel restrictions are the same as ever: no trains will stop at Lewes, and five of the main routes into town close at 4.45pm.

Lewes District Council confirmed the arrangements on 4 September. Its position has not softened. “If you are not a resident of Lewes, people are being encouraged to attend firework events closer to home and not to attend Lewes Bonfire Night,” the council says.

Trains: five stations skipped from 5pm

Trains will not call at Lewes, Falmer, Cooksbridge, Glynde or Southease from 5pm on 5 November until the start of service on Friday 6 November. That is the council’s own statement, and it covers commuters as well as visitors.

The last trains back from London Victoria to those stations are given as 3.24pm and 3.54pm, and the council marks both as still to be confirmed. Check National Rail on the day before you rely on them.

One thing to ignore: the council’s travel page calls 5 November a Wednesday, while its own FAQ page calls it a Thursday. The date is right and the Thursday is right. It is last year’s day name left in the copy.

The stations around Lewes are shut for the same reason Lewes is. The council’s answer is blunt: people could walk in from Glynde or Cooksbridge, and reopening those platforms later would leave crowds waiting on unlit country roads for an infrequent train.

Roads: closures from 4.45pm, parking suspended from noon

Five closure points go live at 4.45pm and the town does not reopen until 2am, or later if Sussex Police are not satisfied and the council’s waste crews have not finished clearing up:

Closure point
A27 junction with A277 Brighton Road (Ashcombe roundabout)
A275 Offham Road with B2116 Plumpton Road
C7 Kingston Road junction with C324 Wellgreen Lane
A26 junction with A2029 Malling Street
A26 Church Lane junction with Church Mayhew Way

Parking restrictions start at noon. On-street parking is suspended on the procession routes from 12pm, and vehicles left there risk being towed from 2pm. Residents are told to get cars home before 4pm.

The A27 stays open to through traffic only, with no parking or waiting. Lewes Borough Bonfire Society tells its own followers the closures run from 4pm, so treat 4pm as the safe deadline rather than 4.45pm.

If you hold a residents’ permit and need somewhere else to leave the car, East Sussex County Council’s parking team is on 01273 335500, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm. Our parking in Lewes page covers the ordinary tariffs, which are not much use on the night: the district car parks are inside the closure area.

What happens, and when

This is not a firework display with a start time. It is a series of torchlit processions that run for about eight hours, and the fireworks come at the end.

The council’s summary is that the Grand Processions begin from 8pm, the fires are lit at around 9.30pm, and each society’s firework display follows. When the town centre fills, access barriers close, and anyone arriving after that stays outside the main route or goes straight to a fire site with a ticket.

Lewes Borough publishes the fullest running order of any society, and it gives a good sense of the shape of the night:

Time Lewes Borough
5.30pm Barrel run, White Lion Lane to the Black Horse
6.10pm First procession, Death March to the war memorial
6.30pm Second procession, torches lit, back to White Lion Lane
7.20pm Third procession to St Anne’s Crescent for the United Grand
8.25pm Town procession, tar barrel thrown into the Ouse at Cliffe Bridge
9.30pm The Grand, out to the fire site at Landport Bottom
11.30pm Final procession, bonfire prayers at the Law Courts

All of those are the society’s own approximate times.

Fire site tickets

Most fire sites are ticketed and sell out. Buy in advance from the societies or from Lewes Tourist Information Centre at 6 High Street.

Cliffe has tickets on sale online now. Its 2026 fire site is Mountfield Road, BN7 2XD, entered from the corner south of Lewes station, then to the end of the road and right to the field behind Lewes Leisure Centre. The site opens at 9pm and Cliffe expects fireworks at 10.15pm, timings subject to change. Paper tickets go on sale in town during October. There are no facilities on site, no animals, and the society warns the field is likely to be cold and wet. Cliffe does not publish the price on its own pages.

Lewes Borough charges £10 for one person’s entry to its fire site at Landport Bottom, sold online and on the gate.

Southover charged £10 in 2025 for Convent Field, sold at the King’s Head, the Swan, St Pancras Stores and Tourist Information, with programmes at £3. Its 2026 ticket post has not gone up yet.

Societies sell their own programmes, and the programme is where each one prints its procession route.

The societies

The council names six societies that process through the town: Lewes Borough, Commercial Square, Southover, Waterloo, South Street and Cliffe. Nevill Juvenile is usually counted as a seventh Lewes society. Between 25 and 30 visiting societies from across Sussex march with them.

There is no single organiser. Each society runs its own procession and its own fire site, and the emergency services and councils manage the event around them.

A warning about the web: waterloobonfire.co.uk is no longer Waterloo Bonfire Society. The domain now serves generic filler articles about UK festivals and side hustles. Do not use it for timings.

Should you go?

The honest answer from every official body is: not if you are not local. East Sussex Fire and Rescue lists Lewes in its Choose Local round-up with the note “we advise not to attend Lewes bonfire society unless you are local because the crowds and narrow streets can present unique safety challenges”.

The council’s safety reports put it harder still, quoted in its FAQ: “Left unchanged, there is a very high likelihood of an incident occurring that could result in serious injury or death to one or more people in this event.” Dozens of injuries are reported each year, many of them from bangers thrown on the procession routes.

It is also, in the council’s words, not suitable for children, young families or vulnerable adults, because of the crowds, the narrow streets and the noise.

If you want the night without the crush, Rocket FM streams it live, and there are eight other bonfire nights in the district between mid-October and late November: see bonfire nights near Lewes and Seaford Bonfire.

Still to be confirmed

  • The last-train times from Victoria, which the council flags as provisional.
  • Cliffe’s ticket price, not published on the society’s own pages.
  • Southover’s 2026 fire site ticket details, expected in October.
  • Every society’s printed programme and procession route, on sale in town from October.

We will update this page as each is published. For everything else moving on the roads this autumn, see Lewes roadworks and travel.

Sources